The Men Who Run Everest Have Had Enough

Sherpas are making a stand in the wake of a devastating avalanche.

It began with a simple request. The Sherpas asked for 96 hours off, so they could search for the bodies of more than a dozen of their friends and relatives killed on Everest and return to their villages to grieve. It turned into a strike, with leaders demanding 13 conditions be met by next Monday if they are to return to work for this year's climbing season.

"The Sherpas are the backbone of the whole industry," climber Gavin Turner told Esquire.com in a Skype interview from base camp. "What this situation highlights is that without them, everything grinds to a halt."

Turner was doing some soul-searching after he and a Sherpa guide, Phu Tsering, were only a few hundred yards from being crushed early Friday when an ice ridge broke onto dozens of Sherpas who were fixing ropes and carrying loads of gear to higher camps. Thirteen bodies were recovered, at least three more were presumed dead.

"Once we realized after a few seconds that we were essentially out of harms' way and we were just going to be covered in snow dust, Tsering began chanting in Tibetan some Buddhist prayers and reached in his pocket and pulled out some rice. He basically made an offering to the mountain god," Turner said as he stood outside in the cold. The communications tent was being used for a Saturday night showing of the "The Big Lebowski."

Turner said the fact that all of those killed were Sherpas illustrates the long-simmering inequity between the adventurers who come to conquer Everest and the sherpas who enable it.

"The sheer number of people who are climbing Everest and the desire of the expedition organizers to provide a top-notch experience means an increasing amount of gear has to be taken up to the high camps" exposing the Sherpas to more risk, he said.

Christian Kober

"On one hand, you could say that's just a stroke of bad luck, but I really think it highlights the imbalance, the inequity of the industry."

After hiking back to camp and calling his parents, Turner joined Tsering in his tent, where the two men, who had met only days before, absorbed the full calamity of the day.

"He showed me photos on his phone of his wife and 2-year-old son," said Turner, 38, on his first Everest attempt. The 35-year-old Tsering had summited five times.

"I asked him what he thought about going back up and he said, 'So much danger. So much danger,' " Turner recalled.

As the day progressed and victims were recovered, Turner watched a helicopter fly bodies dangling from a cable to a helipad at base camp.

"It went on for hours," he Turner. "It was like a scene out of a war movie."

Death has always a part of challenging Everest, so much so that mountaineers debate whether guides should even announce the fatalities.

About 4,000 people have tried climbing the mountain, with approximately 265 fatalities, of which about 40 percent were Sherpa. (Another Sherpa died earlier this month of a high altitude pulmonary edema.)

This year, permits were issued for 334 Westerners, and there are more than 600 working Sherpa, said Alan Arnette, who writes www.alanarnette.com, the definitive blog about Everest expeditions.

The Sherpa, an ethnic group who have lived in the south Himalayas for hundreds of years, have genetically adapted to the low oxygen environment.

They carry supplies, set up camp, cook, establish routes, set ladders over crevasses in the ice field, transport oxygen and fix ropes that many climbers use for safety.

"At 23,000 feet, most Westerners are struggling to breathe and these guys have a pick and are trying to make a level platform on a 30-degree slope," said Arnette, of Fort Collins, Colo., who tackled Everest four times, summiting once. "It's apples and oranges out there. There's no way a Westerner could function at that level."

Sherpas call Mt. Everest "Chomolungma," which translates into Holy Mother. But it's not spirituality that motivates them to risk their lives for tourists.

"A lot of climbers have romantic notions about why the Sherpas do this work," said anthropologist Sherry B. Ortner, author of the book, "Life and Death on Mt. Everest: Sherpas and Himalayan Mountaineering." "For the Sherpas it has always very clearly been about the money. This is higher paying work than anything else they could do."

A top Sherpa can earn about $6,000 in a two to three-month season, about 10 times the average annual income in Nepal. Top Western guides, however, can make more than $25,000.

Egos, resentments, colonial attitudes and cultural misunderstandings surface periodically, and Sherpas have held work stoppages before.

But last year, things turned violent when a trio of elite European climbers may or may not have violated mountain protocol and/or hurt the pride of some Sherpas by climbing too quickly.

Teru Kuwayama

Adrian Ballinger/AP

What is known is that professional Italian climber Simone Moro called a Sherpa a "motherfucker," a brawl ensued, and the dispute ended when a Nepalese major witnessed the two sides sign a peace accord.

The deaths last week of so many Sherpa brought things to a head. Sherpa guides and sympathetic expedition leaders held a series of meetings over the weekend, hoping to pressure the Nepalese government into industry-wide changes.

As part of the ultimatum, the Sherpas want about $100,000 paid to the families of those killed or critically injured. The government earlier offered about $400. They also want increases in the mandatory insurance their employers purchase, including a doubling of the $11,000 life insurance policy for high-altitude workers (which was only $4,600 last year), as well as other financial and medical assurances.

The government this year made somewhere between $3.3 million and $8.3 million in permit fees from foreign Everest climbers, an amount difficult to calculate because of group discounts. "It's a sensitive situation here right now," Turner said in an email today. "Lots of different negotiations going on; Sherpas hoping to have their demands met by the government; expedition operators doing a juggling act."

But in the end, money may only be a part of it. Respect may also factor in.

"We are happy to get more tourists, but at the same time, we Sherpa have to be aware of our religion and our culture," Ngima Gelgen Sherpa, 24, said in an interview in Fort Collins, where he moved from Lukla a month ago. His uncle, an Everest guide, was in base camp when the ice fell.

There are all types of folly that take place on the mountain. People race to climb the fastest, they hang glide off it, or paraglide, or try for records by being naked the longest at the summit (a feat attempted by a Sherpa in 2006 to the horror of his countrymen)

"I think it's all very well to have all that mountaineering bravado of coming to knock the bastard off, but that part I just find disrespectful," said Turner. "It undermines the culture and what this experience should be."

Gordon Wiltsie

This year's spectacle was canceled Sunday when the Discovery Channel canned "Everest Jump Live," in which Joby Ogwyn (climbing with four cameramen) was to fly off the summit in a wing suit while NBC News' Willie Geist hosted the broadcast.

Reports vary as to whether two or five of the dead were working for NBC. NBC didn't respond to questions about the Sherpas, only issuing a statement that the network was "grateful and relieved that the 7 NBC News staffers on site are all accounted for and unharmed" and offering their "thoughts and prayers" to the affected families.

Turner, a Seattle resident who paid an average amount - $40,000 - for his expedition, was undecided if he would continue on if the Sherpas come back.

"I trained for this with all of my energy, and an enormous financial commitment, leaving home for two months, living in the cold in a tent. One has to be totally committed to achieve a goal of climbing the world's highest mountain. Yet in light of what happened, it makes me pause and reflect on my motivation," he said.

Saturday morning, when Turner saw his guide, Tsering told him he was leaving and not coming back. Turner hugged him goodbye, and then Tsering grabbed a Zip Loc, filled it with rice and handed it to Turner.

"If you go back up the mountain make sure you make an offering," Tsering said.

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